


The Book

by camichats



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven, Getting Back Together, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Post-Season/Series 01, Pseudo-Incest, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26431834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camichats/pseuds/camichats
Summary: It was bad enough that Vanya had written that book about them in the first place, but what Diego couldn't get over was the part where she told the entire world that him and Klaus had been dating for a few years-- called it 'dysfunctional' like she was better than the rest of them.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 179





	The Book

**Author's Note:**

> Another The-Details-of-Vanya's-Book fic
> 
> The style here is a lil wonky, in large part because I don't read autobiographies and made hers VERY stream of consciousness

_With only our siblings, Dad, Mom, and Pogo for company, we latched onto each other. We weren’t a cohesive group. There was the larger group, the Umbrella Academy, that I was never a part of-- training that I was never allowed to take part in, and the bonding time afterwards where I was forgotten-- but they never functioned as a team, not really. The superhero team of the Umbrella Academy was Dad’s dream, and a publicity stunt._

_Outside of that, on the days where the training was lessened and there was no mission, we had our groups that we broke into. Luther and Allison, Diego and Klaus, and me, Five, and Ben. I know that Five going missing and Ben's death had nothing to do with me, but it's always felt like some sort of cosmic joke that the only members of the Umbrella Academy to go missing are the ones I was close to. Me, Ben, and Five, we were all close, but it wasn't the same way Luther and Allison were close, or the way Diego and Klaus were. What we had was the sort of relationship siblings were supposed to have with each other, I think._

_Had Five not gone missing and Ben not died, I believe I would have stayed a little longer at the mansion. After Ben died is when we started leaving. I know that if Ben had still been there, I would've stayed longer. I would have wanted to keep seeing him. I've always felt that it was true for all of us. Five going missing changed all of us, but not in the same way that losing Ben did. Five was the high strung kid among us, but Ben was the one that everyone got along with._

_Five had been the most high strung, but he’d also been the one most likely to rebel in any meaningful way. He was the one most likely to leave before any of the rest of us. Had he not gone missing, it definitely would've been him that first left, not Diego. Five always liked to do things his own way. I wonder what it says about me that after all this time, my two best friends were gone by the time I was eighteen and I never found anyone else._

* * *

Klaus was the only person that Diego was happy to see. 

He snuck in to see Mom every once in a while, and there was nothing that happened in the house that Pogo didn't know about, so he'd seen both of them recently. All the same, he was happy to see them. Pogo was his usual self, and there was a comfort in that. Mom was as wonderful as she'd ever been. A little out of it maybe, but her maker had just died and she likely wasn't equipped to deal with that. She was still kind, still attentive, and she acted almost as though nothing had changed. He was always happy to see her, but even more so now that dear old Dad couldn't boss her around anymore. Of his siblings though, Klaus was the only person that Diego was happy to see. 

Luther was being his usual asshole self, even before he accused one of them for being the one to murder Dad. Thinking about it made him snort. If any of them were going to kill him, it would've been back when they were still living at home so that they stood to benefit from it. Killing Dad now wouldn't benefit any of them, and besides, Luther should've known better. They were a fucked up bunch, but killing their own father was beyond any of them. 

Allison was also being her usual self, which meant she pretty much pretended they were a normal family. She smiled at her siblings, and she acted like losing their father was the same as it was for normal families: he wasn't the best, and maybe none of them had appreciated what he'd done. She acted like he wasn't a fucking monster. 'Complicated feelings' was what she had said to Diego when he asked how she felt about it. 

And then there was fucking Vanya. He couldn't believe she had the nerve to show up. She hadn't done what the rest of them had and simply left, she'd had to air her every thought about their family for the world to read. That most people hadn't taken her up on her offer was inconsequential. He'd read it. He'd seen what she'd fucking said about him. Not just about him, but specifically about his relationship to Klaus. He knew that he was an easy person to rile up, but it normally evaporated after a few minutes. That his anger had stuck around for Vanya meant something, not that she seemed to care. He wasn't sure she gave a shit about anything that didn't effect her personally. 

Five showed up, they had their goddamn memorial service, and then they all went their separate ways. He pretended to be annoyed with Klaus hitching a ride with him, but they both knew better. Diego always pretended, and Klaus always saw through it and made him laugh. 

He'd missed Klaus. He still saw him, more often than Mom, even, but he never knew how long it would be between visits. Sometimes it was when Klaus got arrested and needed someone to pick him up. Sometimes it was when Klaus was trying to get clean and needed a place to stay before he inevitably left to buy some drugs, and he didn't come back because he knew that Diego didn't approve. They saw each other less and less as time went on. Leaving the mansion after both of them got to say 'fuck you' to Dad one more time made it feel different. 

"Did you read Vanya's book?" Diego asked. He hadn't meant to ask, but the question spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it. It was a strange occurrence considering he usually had to think of the entire sentence he wanted before a single word could be spoken. 

"Parts of it," Klaus said dismissively. He leaned forward in his seat, arms crossed along the back of Diego's chair, and his mouth close enough to Diego's ear that he could feel heat from it when he spoke. "Why? Is that what's got you in a tizzy? You did a quick reread before showing up for the pissing match? That would explain why you're such a grumpy-grump." 

Diego snorted. He didn't need to reread it. He'd read it once, and that should've been enough, but he'd read parts of it five more times, hoping that this with this reread, it wouldn't be as bad; it always was. If anything, it got worse. 

* * *

_I'm not sure if anything actually happened with Luther and Allison. Before I left, they were full of longing looks and giggling at their inside jokes. Luther was too busy trying to be the perfect Number One for it to go anywhere, I think._

_Klaus and Diego are a different story._

_The older I've gotten, the more I wonder how they ever got along. Diego took everything seriously and always wanted to be the best. He used to say that his body was a temple, whereas Klaus started drinking even before Ben died. Everything was a joke to Klaus. It didn't matter what Dad did or how angry he got, Klaus treated it like a joke. When Dad got angry with Diego, Diego would get mad at himself. He'd push himself harder to be better where Klaus tried to make himself impossible to be around._

_Luther and Allison were obvious. Klaus and Diego weren't, not really. I mentioned before, how Klaus would steal Mom's clothes so he could wear a dress-- the heels being left alone for a while after getting his jaw wired-- and that was the only time it was obvious. It's the only time Diego's eyes would wander in front of the rest of us. I've always wondered if the only reason they kissed was because it was Mom's clothes that Klaus was wearing. Diego had always been closer with Mom than the rest of us._

* * *

"He did read it," Ben said one day. With the apocalypse averted, Klaus had worked on controlling his powers. It's not like he'd realized he wanted to be sober or something, but when he realized that Ben could have something like a life through him, he'd agreed to work on it. 

"What?" Diego asked. 

"Vanya's book." 

" _Ben_ ," Klaus hissed. 

"...Oh." He shouldn't have believed Klaus when he said no. All of them had read it. Hell, even Pogo had read it. Diego gave a shrug that didn't look half as casual as he wanted it to. "I'm not mad at her anymore-" hard to be, after figuring out the specific way that Dad had manipulated her, which went beyond what the rest of them endured "-but did you read some of the shit she wrote?" he asked Ben. 

"Yeah. I was reading over Klaus's shoulder one of the times that he was in rehab." 

Klaus glared at Ben. "Don't you have ghosty things to be doing? Go haunt someone other than me for a change. I'm sure Five would welcome the change to his usually droll morning routine. Who knows, maybe he'll be happy to see the only sibling with half a brain." 

Ben didn't believe that Five would welcome his company right now for a second, but he rolled his eyes and left. Not to go see Five, but Allison was still in the house and Ben liked catching up with her. She'd just gotten back from a visit with Claire, so she probably had pictures to share in addition to stories. 

"Our brother is such a buzzkill," Klaus muttered as Ben's blue glowing back left the room. 

"You saw what she wrote about us?" Diego asked. After Vanya's autobiography came out, he saw Klaus less often than normal. The 'sometimes' of Klaus's visits turned into 'hardly ever'. Ben had just confirmed that Klaus read it. If Klaus read the book-- actually read it, from cover to cover instead of the snippets that he’d claimed before-- then he'd definitely seen what Vanya had said about specifically them and their relationship. 

* * *

_Love isn't something any of us were raised to understand. There was loyalty to Dad, affection for Mom and Pogo, and bonding between ourselves. Bonding, if only because we never met anyone else. The first time I met someone my age that wasn't one of my siblings, I was nineteen-- years past the point where most teenagers had a first boyfriend or girlfriend. It's no wonder that some of us latched onto each other for a romantic relationship._

_Klaus and Diego were together. I don't think they were in love because I don't think any of us were capable of it at that age, but they were as close to it as they could get._

* * *

"Which part bothered you more," Klaus mused, staring up at the ceiling from where he was laying across the tabletop, "that she told the entire world we were fucking, or that she thought it didn't mean anything?" 

"I think the question is, which part of it bothered _you_?" When Klaus looked over at him, Diego raised an eyebrow. "You stopped coming by after you read it." 

"What happened to you not knowing whether or not I'd read it?" Klaus asked with a careless smirk. 

He hadn't thought about it, to be honest. After Dad's funeral, he'd asked, been told no, and then there had been bigger problems. Ben told him that Klaus did read it, but it wasn’t until now that Diego thought about the timing. "She had no right," was all Diego said. 

"Aww," Klaus cooed obnoxiously, rolling over to ruffle Diego's short hair, "you did love me." 

Diego gave Klaus a flat look. Of fucking course he had. He'd told him as much, even if Klaus had never said it back. "Fuck off." 

Klaus pressed a smacking kiss to Diego's cheek, then a softer one, closer to his mouth. 

"That's the opposite of fucking off." 

"Make me," Klaus said, then kissed him on the mouth. 

All Diego did was pull him closer; they both knew that that's how he'd react. 


End file.
